Hello
I am looking for a scanner app like Vuescan or Image scan that works over a LAN / WIFI network.I cannot see anything in the software packages and my researches have been fruitless.
Any thoughts would be most welcome
Thanks
First things first:
What is the exact make/model of the scanner?
Have you tested it locally? What driver did you use?
What version of Rocky?
I have an epson xp750 currently. I am using the epson inkjet printer 1.01 driver for the printer part over the network without issue but the print driver does offer to drive the scanner part (like it does on mac & windows). The scanner / printer works fine on the network on mac and pc so I don’t have an issue with the scanner.
My issue is that I cannot find a Linux app that drives scanners over a network. They all seem to need to be connected directly by a cable.
I am running rocky 8.6
Many thanks
OK, that’s clear, but you have not confirmed that you have the scanner working over direct connect yet? Testing direct (as a first step) will help understand how the scanner works on Rocky. e.g. one Epson scanner I tested needed some proprietary firmware loaded with the driver before it was even seen by linux.
Maybe someone here knows of a majic “app”, but I only know about horrible low level stuff that’s really hard to set up.
@chlowden I tried a couple different options to scan over network, with my Epson EW-M873T on Rocky Linux 9 today.
-
Epson Scan 2 is available from Linux Scanner Driver Download | Epson
It isn’t particularly great, but it works. The application doesn’t appear to play well with my screen’s highdpi scaling. - VueScan is a proprietary application available on FlatHub (you can just search for it in the GNOME software center). It works, but it doesn’t have the sort of neat features I expected (auto-rotation of images, etc).
- xsane is in the default Rocky Linux repos. This is an old standby, and it still works great. A little complicated due to it:s sheer amount of configuration options.
- Skanlite is in the EPEL repos. Another frontend to SANE, but much simpler / modern / easy to use.
For any of these, You’ll need to make sure that your firewall allows mDNS so that the application can automatically find the scanner (though some allow you to manually specify it as well).
There are a lot of other options out there as well. I’d suggest Skanlite, or xsane if you want to stick with the default repos.
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Gerry, I was counting on a generic driver but you are absolutely right … the horrible low level stuff is where I get very stuck.
Brian,
Thank you very much for your concise overview of what is available.
It looks like I am starting to appreciate the subtle difference between home style printer / scanners and scanners. Epson Scan 2 looks to be generic driver for their scanners but does not recognize my printer / scanner. From what I can gleen on the web, the XP-750 is not on the list. With the Epson Scan 2 installed Skanlite sees the driver, but cannot connect to the machine over the network, confirming what I think gerry66uk was insinuating, that the driver needs to be the right one.
Hmm. Yep, on SANE: Supported Devices I see the XP-750 is listed with the note “network interface supported via DFSG non-free iscan-network-nt package” 
By the way, Vuescan does list itself as support the XP-750. So you could always just install it via Flathub, setup guide here: Flatpak—the future of application distribution
From the Sane list, the vast majority of scanners (XP-750 included) use an USB interface and I am looking for an ethernet connection.
Sadly, Vuescan does not work over ethernet from what I read on the website.
Scanner and printer drivers for Linux is one of linux desktops greatest weaknesses for me.
I will try to scan via a Windows VM.
Many thanks for all your help
I don’t have any experience with your scanner, but I have gotten Scanning over the LAN working for other Samsung MFP’s by editing /etc/sane.d/xerox_mfp.conf.
Here you can find an entry for the “Samsung SCX-4500W, network mode”
Here I just had to enter:
tcp IPOfPrinter 9400
Once that file was saved, I was able to scan over the LAN using any program that supports sane, for example “The Gimp”.
As my printer is a different model than the one the entry would suggest, this may also work for your scanner. But if it doesn’t there are also other files in that directory, for example epson2.conf, epsonds.conf, or escl.conf. Those files also have network options. Just read the comments in the file, then add your scanner’s IP & try it out.
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Just following up because I had to do a lot of scanning myself recently. I ended up using NAPS2, which is available as a Flatpak. GitHub - cyanfish/naps2: Scan documents to PDF and more, as simply as possible.
Ironically, I discovered it because a proprietary scanning application listed it on a comparison page.